Home entertainment systems enable viewers to access entertainment content from several sources, including TV content from cable or satellite, music from CDs, and movies on DVDs and videotape. Also, many systems include personal video recorders (PVR), which enable users to record televised content onto hard disk drives (HDD) for later viewing.
The present invention recognizes that home entertainment systems which provide the above capabilities open avenues to increased functionality, enabling users to do more things than simply view whatever content happens to be broadcast. For instance, PVRs enable viewers to record television programs for later viewing at convenient times, without having to sit through commercials. Advanced digital systems such as DVDs can enable viewers to view non-public content such as home videos and digital pictures. In short, viewers can now select a variety of content from many sources for viewing and copying.
But the variety in content and media type, while opening avenues for more entertainment options, also poses content management challenges. Currently, content in a home entertainment system must be managed media type-by-media type, but this is inconvenient because it forces the user to manage DVD content separately from PVR content, etc. Also, it may be desirable for access speed and convenience reasons to play or store content that is stored on one type of media using a component that is associated with another type of media. For example, as recognized herein it might be desirable to offload content that has been recorded in a PVR to DVD, to free up space on the HDD of the PVR. Or, it might be desirable to transfer music to a PVR HDD from a CD for quick access and vice-versa for storage capacity reasons. Still farther, it might be desired to make several copies of home movies or photographs for friends and family without repeating the copying process for each and every copy sought to be made.